Memoirs: Alexander Berkman
David Berman Papers
Machsikei Hadas Congregation
Brownsville
Calendar: Shaare Torah, Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project workshop
Community News
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Memoirs:
"Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist"
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Title page of "Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist," Yiddish edition, 1920.
—Gift of Seth Glick
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All year we’ve been featuring memoirs written by Jewish people in Western Pennsylvania. Our author this week is Jewish, and his setting is Western Pennsylvania, but the direction of his story is outward rather than inward.
Alexander Berkman came to Pittsburgh during the Homestead steel strike in 1892 and made plans to assassinate Henry Clay Frick. Berkman succeeded in reaching the steel industry leader, shooting him twice and stabbing him with a dagger. Frick survived the attack, and Berkman was arrested and sentenced to 22 years in prison. He ultimately served 14 years, most of them in a cell in Western Penitentiary, on what is now the North Side of Pittsburgh. He wrote about the experience in his 1912 memoir, “Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist.”
The original manuscript appeared in Mother Earth magazine and was later published in book form. Our version, given to us by Seth Glick, is a two-volume Yiddish edition of the memoir, published out of New York in 1920.
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A straight-edged, knife-like implement with wooden handle. The blade tip has been broken off; there are intersecting cross patterns at the top of the blade. Believed to be the letter opener used by Alexander Berkman in his assassination attempt on Henry Clay Frick, July 23, 1892. The letter opener was on Frick's desk at the time of the assassination attempt.
—Gift of Mrs. Lawrence Litchfield [91.10.1] Learn more
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Others have written insightfully about the importance of “Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist” as literature and as a document of labor and political history.
Our focus is local Jewish history.
Berkman neither emerged from the local Jewish community nor made use of it as he planned his attack. But he had two notable and opposing encounters with members of the local Jewish population over a period of several decades.
The first was Joseph Selig Glick, who was the only Yiddish publisher in this city at the turn of the century. In a section on the Berkman incident in his book “The Jewish Experience in Western Pennsylvania: A History, 1755-1945,” historian Jacob Feldman wrote, “A representative of the Jewish community, Joseph Glick of the Volksfreund, came to the city jail and said, ‘(I can) learn if Berkman is really a Jew… by a conversation with him… Pride in my race led me to believe the assassin was not a Hebrew, for Hebrews do not murder nor are they Anarchists… The Jews of Pittsburgh would not lift a finger to aid Berkman if he is a Jew.’ The Pittsburgh Commercial-Gazette reported that Glick ‘was barred from a glimpse’ of Berkman, who refused to speak to him.”
The second was Jacob Margolis. He was a six-year-old boy in the Hill District at the time of the assassination attempt. By the time “Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist” appeared in print in 1912, Margolis had become a lawyer and a leader within the local radical politics. He also became a friend of Berkman, which created challenges for Margolis back home in Pittsburgh. Facing the threat of disbarment in 1919, Margolis said, “It does not take religion to make men treat each other right. The education of all classes, along the lines of social and economic living will do that very thing, and then there will be no need of government, no law, no agreement or anything of that kind.”
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"Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist," Chapter 3: The Spirit of Pittsburgh, Yiddish edition.
—Gift of Seth Glick
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Who knows how many Yiddish speakers in Pittsburgh purchased a Yiddish edition of “Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist,” and read the following paragraph in their native tongue? “This is Pittsburgh, the heart of American industrialism, whose spirit moulds the life of the great Nation. The spirit of Pittsburgh, the Iron City! Cold as steel, hard as iron, its products. These are the keynote of the great Republic, dominating all other chords, sacrificing harmony to noise, beauty to bulk. Its torch of liberty is a furnace fire, consuming, destroying, devastating: a country-wide furnace, in which the bones and marrow of the producers, their limbs and bodies, their health and blood, are cast into Bessemer steel, rolled into armor plate, and converted into engines of murder to be consecrated to Mammon by his high priests, the Carnegies, the Fricks.” |
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Next week: Coming over
All year, the Rauh Jewish Archives is highlighting memoirs of Jewish life in Western Pennsylvania. If you would like to donate a memoir, or just chat about the stories you've read, contact the archive or call 412-454-6406.
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New Collection:
David Berman Collection
on Northcentral Pennsylvania Jewish Communities [2018.0070]
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Cover, "B'Chor Ben B'chor: Biography of the Hirsh0Sykes Families in Words and Pictures"
—David Berman Papers [2018.0070]
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David Berman grew up in Emporium, Pa. and began researching his family history around 2014, following his professional retirement. He found family in small towns throughout Western and Central Pennsylvania.
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Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania:
Machsikei Hadas Congregation
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Machsikei Hadas Congregation was founded around 1897 by Jewish immigrants from the historic Galicia region of Eastern Europe. The name Machsikei Hadas (Defenders of the Faith) was almost certainly a reference to the Jewish political party and newspaper of the same name.
Several early members of Machsikei Hadas had some connection to the city of Belz and followed the Belz Chasidic Dynasty. Like many Jewish congregations with a strong Chassidic influence, the members of Machsikei Hadas were ethnically Ashkenazic but prayed according to some version of the Sephardic nusach, or rite.
Machsikei Hadas also supported various auxiliaries, as well as a landmanshaft called the First Austrian Hebrew Beneficial Society.
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Statement from Machsikei Hadas listing aliyos (honors) throughout the year
—Machsikei Hadas Record [MSS 145]
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Our entry for Machsikei Hadas Congregation includes photographs of its two synagogues, its 40th anniversary memorial book from 1936, various ephemera from congregational life, and a selection of relevant newspaper articles. |
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The Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania brings together numerous online resources into a clearinghouse for conducting research about Jewish history in this region. As we migrate information to this new website, we’ll be announcing new entries and resources in this section of the newsletter. |
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Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania:
Brownsville
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Group photograph of the students and teachers of the Ohave Israel Religious School in Brownsville, Pa., standing in front of the synagogue building, undated.
—Synagogue Documentation Project Photographs [MSP 317].
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In honor of the Brownsville Jewish Community Reunion this morning, we have updated and expanded our entry of the Jewish community of Brownsville, Pa.
Our revised entry includes additional photographs and documents, plus improved footnotes and citations. We are most excited to share a searchable database containing the names of more than 600 Jewish people known to have lived in Brownsville. The list was compiled by Jordana Rosenfeld, and we will be expanding it over the coming months as we continue inputting her data.
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Calendar: Past and Present |
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June 23:
Rabbi and Rebbetzin Wasserman Celebration
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Rabbi Daniel Wasserman and Rebbetzin Judy Wasserman were hired as the spiritual leaders of Shaare Torah Congregation in 1995 and were formally installed in 1997.
As they prepare to leave Pittsburgh for Israel this summer, Shaare Torah is hosting a weekend of learning, prayer and community in their honor.
The Rauh Jewish Archives will be kicking off the weekend on Thursday, June 23 at 7:45 p.m. with a historical perspective about Shaare Torah Congregation. The talk will consider previous moments of transition and renewal at the congregation over the past century, such as the creation of the Pittsburgh Hebrew School and the introduction of bat mitzvah rituals.
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[Left] Cover of program for Shaare Torah Congregation's 117th annual banquet, featuring the installation of Rabbi Daniel Wasserman, March 1997. |
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June 26:
How to Use the Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project
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The Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project is a free, online collection of English-language newspapers covering the Jewish population of Western Pennsylvania from 1895 to 2010. Carnegie Mellon University hosts the website and recently moved it to a new online platform. To help researchers with this transition, the Rauh Jewish Archives, the Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle are providing a free online workshop to help researchers use the website. We’ll introduce the website, review its basic features and functions, and offer tips and techniques for conducting research. We’ll also be collecting questions and suggestions.
This vritual program is on Sun., June 26 at 1:00 p.m. ET. Please register online. The program will be recorded and made available online.
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Now Open:
“Pittsburgh’s John Kane:
The Life & Art of an American Workman”
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"Crossing the Junction," John Kane |
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The Carnegie Institute surprised the art world in 1927 when it accepted a painting called “Scene from the Scottish Highlands” into its annual International Exhibition of Paintings. The exhibit, now called the Carnegie International, was one of the longest-running and most important surveys of American contemporary painting, a showcase of world-famous painters.
The artist was John Kane, a 67-year-old immigrant laborer in Pittsburgh with no formal art training but an artistic eye and approach all his own. Through the exposure from the exhibit, Kane gained international recognition in the final years of his life. Today, his work can be found in some of the most prestigious art museums in America, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Art Institute of Chicago.
The local art world has revisited Kane many times since his death in 1934, but there has never been a thorough historical examination of his life. The new Heinz History Center exhibit “Pittsburgh’s John Kane: The Life & Art of an American Workman” is the first to consider how Kane’s life and world influenced his art. Grounded in scholarship from Louise Lippincott and Maxwell King's new book “American Workman: The Life and Art of John Kane,” the exhibit asks: How did an immigrant worker roaming around Western Pennsylvania at the turn of the century become an artist of national acclaim?
“Pittsburgh’s John Kane” includes 37 paintings by Kane from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Carnegie Museum of Art, American Folk Art Museum, Detroit Institute of Arts, the Phillips Collection, and others collections. The exhibit also includes rarely seen archival objects, including a collection of silver gelatin photographs Kane took as painting studies. An immersive walk-through of Kane’s final painting—“Crossing the Junction”—will allow visitors to travel through a Pittsburgh landscape as Kane did and explore his artistic process.
The exhibit is now open and runs through the rest of the year.
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The 1950 Census is now online.
You can access the census data using the link below. As additional research tools become the coming weeks and months, we'll share them here.
If you would like help using these records, please contact the Archive.
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Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project |
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The home page of the new Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project website, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University Libraries. The redesigned website is launching this month. |
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By now, you're probably expertly zipping around the new Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project platform. But if you still need a little help navigating the features and tools of the website, the Rauh Jewish Archives recently contributed a brief explanatory article to the Jewish Chronicle. It provides some basic tips and techniques for conducting research using the new site.
We plan to provide a live virtual training workshop in the near future to review the website and its functionalities. Until then, we are here to help you troubleshoot problems. You can contact the archive or call 412-454-6406.
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[IMAGE: Marian Schreiber and employees at the Schreiber Trucking Company, c.1943—from Schreiber Family Papers and Photographs, MSS 846.]
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The Rauh Jewish Archives was founded on November 1, 1988 to collect, preserve, and make accessible the documentary history of Jews and Jewish communities of Western Pennsylvania. You can help the RJHPA continue its work by making a donation that will directly support the work being done in Western Pa. |
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